This was the presentation for CILP by Paula Nottingham on the 17th November 2011.

1. Reflective Practice CILIP 17 th November 2011 Paula Nottingham Rosemary McGuinness

2. Reflective Practice Reflective practice is a valuable way of understanding how professionals evaluate what they do in order to improve their performance in the workplace.

3. Topics to be Covered Theory Practice

4. Work Based Learning/Professional Practice WBL can be within a disciplinary area or used more generically within a workplace that contains transdisciplinary knowledge (Gibbons et al., 1994). Looks at learning in the workplace - there is a need to find the space and time to learn and negotiate change for busy professionals performing various roles and functions - often the emphasis is on the service or competencies that are required versus individual or team capabilities. Considers individual and organisational learning

5. Tripartite Practice Professional learner Employer/workplace Learning consultant/professional peers

6. Argyris and Schön “ When they came to explore the nature of organizational learning Chris Argyris and Donald Schon (1978: 2-3) described the process as follows… Single-loop learning is like a thermostat that learns when it is too hot of too cold and turns the heat on or off. The thermostat can perform this task because it can receive information (the temperature of the room) and take corrective action. Double-loop learning occurs when error is detected and corrected in ways that involve the modification of an organization ’s underlying norms, policies and objectives” (Infed, 2011).

7. Reflective Practice: Schön Reflection-in-action practice is when practitioners think about practice while they are doing it. Reflection-on-action can happen after the encounter. It is about using tacit knowledge and treating experience as ‘unique’ versus solely using technical rationality. “ It is the entire process of reflection-in-action which is central to the ‘art’ by which some practitioners deal well with situations of uncertainty, instability uniqueness, and value conflict” ( Schön, 1983, p. 50). Schön exercise - fill out the sample learning log using experience from your workplace.

8. Reflective Practice: Kolb Kolb developed models of experiential learning practice that include developing learning from doing. Learning from experience is a variation of this practice.

9. The Kolb learning cycle

10. The Kolb learning styles and cycle

12. Kolb Exercise Take an incident from you own professional working environment and apply the thinking form the Kolb cycle. Discuss this with others. Doing… Reviewing… Concluding… Trying out…

13. Engeström “ Workplace learning has largely emerged as an extension of educational research …The commitment of studies of workplace learning is commonly pedagogical: improvement of conditions and practices of learning and instruction in work settings. Organizational learning emerged as a sub-field of organization and management studies, trying to find explanatory mechanisms for success and failure in organizational renewal and subsequently organizational knowledge formation. Studies in organizational learning are commonly driven by interests in management, whether utilitarian or critical. The divide between workplace learning and organizational learning has resemblances to the classic divides between micro and macro, between agency and structure ” ( Engeström and Kerosuo, 2007, p. 336).

14. Engeström Activity theory looks at organisations as learners that puts the emphasis on the object – e.g. what is done and learned together in inter-organisational networks – versus connections and collaborations of networks.

15. Engeström Theories in Use This is an example of how Engeström ’ theory can be applied to thinking about the learner (Francis, 2007).